I am aware of the fact that Finland is bilingual, I meant that Sweden would have to become bilingual as well?
Heh, my compatriots trying to learn finnish! There?s an amusing thought!

On the offers of trade: I happily trade you our part of Lapland for Ã…land! However, our royal house for your president seems to be a very poor offer?

Tod, I realised I had missed including Charles X on the list of ?Competent Swedish Commanders After Gustavus II Adolphus?. I hereby submit him!
And when are you going to say something about my other arguments??

Let's make a compromise. We skip the invasion bit and join Norway, Finland and Sweden and call ourselfs Nordic, Norden or something like that. We settle for a language known as Nordiska (that we in our best Tolkien fashion invent ourselfs)... How about that? How about our flag? well, White for the snow, some blue for the lakes and let's throw in some red and yellow there to so that we Swedes and Norweigans get som of our old flags too...

As a loyal Scanian I find myself shocked that no one has talked about us southerners. If you wanna join Finland and Norway we Scanians will probably join Denmark and bring back the good old days. Has everyone forgotten about Ã–resundsbron?

"If you dismiss military victories as ?only good luck?, then you can prove whatever you wish. It is not a valid argument." You're absolutely right in that. But let's consider Battle of Narva. Russians are besieging city of Narva. They have 32900 soldiers in fortified positions. Sweden have 10500 soldiers who are hungry and tired. Charles decides to attack at once despite officers' objections. The idea is to breach russian fortifications in both flanks. After brief bombardment by swedish artillery Charles orders infantry to attack. At the same time begins snow storm so nobody can see no more than about 20 m. Since it's impossible to see anything or even give orders to troops generals again want to stop the attack but Charles still presses the attack. This time gamble worked. Russians didn't have time to open fire before swedish forces fell upon them. Panic started among russians and lot of them drowned to Narva river. Russians lost about 10000 men dead and about 15000 were captured, swedish losses were minimal. I consider this victory a lucky one because it was mostly due to favourable weather. If weather had cleared before swedish army got to russian positions I very much doubt they could have won.

Gustavus III planned to make an amphibious assault near St. Petersburg while smaller army attacks Vyborg from land. Troops were badly equipped and supplied and officers were almost openly revolting. Amphibious assault had to be called off because swedish navy couldn't defeat russian fleet. On land things didn't work out either. Swedes failed to capture Fredrikshamn or Nyslot. Gustavus was lucky that Denmark declared war on Sweden and he had good reason to leave Finland. Denmark signed peace soon and next summer Gustavus tried again to advance to Vyborg. And again he failed. Sweden was about to lose the war when Cronstedt managed to destroy russian fleet and Russia agreed to sign peace in august 1790. Gustavus was assasinated 16.3.1792. I'm not all that familiar Gustavus' campaing against Denmark but his campaign against Russia shows no talent as a military commander.

Charles X achieved many victories but he nearly exhausted Sweden with his wars. And I still haven't found very detailed information about Charles XIV Gustavus.